The drier air definitely reminds me of living in New England, where the heat is on 9 months out of the year.
I’m happy with how it’s working, although I have yet to see my electric bill. I hope it’s not too bad.
You can turn the fan so it blows out and it will suck the air that’s in the room to the outside (just make sure you don’t have another window open somewhere elsle, or you will be pulling air in from outside through that window).
BTW, where in FL? My wife and I will be in Key West for Halloween and Miami for a few days afterwards. We’ve spent some time in Naples and Tampa and love, love, love the Gulf coast. My wife is already telling me, “No we cannot move to FL.”
DampRid was my best friend when I was living in the dorms during college. Despite the fact that we had an air conditioning unit (window unit), we still had to keep the stuff around to keep the humidity levels reasonable. It was bad enough that there were weeks when the air wouldn’t be on at all, especially during the summer when nobody lived in some of the rooms, so mold became a problem in a lot of the dorms. I remember a friend in sophomore year complained so much about the mold problem in her room that the university bought her a dehumidifier just to fix the problem temporarily; the next year, the dorm went into a remodeling overhaul and all the rooms were “upgraded.” There were a lot of other problems with that dorm, including the ceiling caving in on some kids that lived on the top floor while they were asleep. That ended up being a huge issue, and resulted in 2-person rooms turning into 3-person rooms on that floor.
Florida is humid in most areas, especially during the summer. This means that there are a lot of hazards associated with moisture that you don’t get in colder and drier areas. We keep the air conditioning on in our house at all times, so it reduces the issues that a lot of people may have with food spoiling and moisture issues. However, because of the rains and the way that the house we’re living in is built, I get to scrub down the concrete driveway and front walkway with bleach water every few months to keep the mold/mildew stains at bay.
Clearwater, right next to Tampa. 6 miles from the beach…
I love the Gulf side too. Ft. Myers is nice, if you haven’t been there yet.
Thanks.
I haven’t, but my wife lived there for a while.
I have a dehumidifier and I love it.
When the towel I hang on the rack is still damp the next day, I know it’s time to run it.
Last winter I had a big problem with mold in my room. My bed was over the heat vent, so the heat couldn’t circulate, and I had boxes of books piled in one corner. I did a Big Clean on my room and moved all this junk to find the baseboards black with mold. I moved my bed and used bleach on the walls, then bought two of those little closet dehumidifier buckets for the corners that were really bad. The problem has never returned, although we bought a dehumidifier in the summer that runs pretty much constantly and keeps the house nice and dry all over.
When I was nine, my folks had a new house custom-built, with a swimming pool in the lower level. Nobody around here had ever done that, and nearly all the builders declined to take on such an odd project. We didn’t know what to expect. What we got was lots of humidity. In a few months, the humidity turned a piano and a television into junk. We got a dinky dehumidifier, and it filled up its bucket so quickly that we hooked on a hose instead. The hose ran back into the pool.
Of course too much is a bad thing - that’s precisely why they call it ‘too much’.
I’ve got this one by Haier.
I can move it from room to room and it does get the job done.
Hey, I know Florida is really humid, but that seems like a heck of a lot of moisture. You might want to make sure there’s not another source of moisture, i.e. leaky pipes, leaky gutters/roof/window frames, etc. If your landlord won’t replace screens, there’s no telling what else he may be neglecting.
Why use the electric radiator, as opposed to a portable electric heater that blows warm air? I have both, but never sure which is the “best” to use. (They’re both used to suppliment the monstrosity of an oil burning steam radiator system I have.)
The radiator is also portable, and I don’t need a fan. The furnace has a blower on it so warm air is circulated. No fan is needed in the bedrooms, as the radiators heat them fairly quickly. It seems to me that if you’re blowing air past a heating element then the element is on all the time. With the radiators the oil is heated and, sense it’s dense, it stays warm a long time.
I started a thread on space heaters last month, specifically to ask about the efficiency of the ceramic heaters, but there were no replies.
The dehumidifier is working well. The bucket is 1/4 to 1/3 full when I empty it in the morning and when I get back from work. It’s going to be difficult to gauge how much it costs to run though. I’ve been using the space heater, and I’ve been keeping the flood light on in the driveway (because of the thefts). Yesterday I left it on all day because I leave the house at literally oh-dark-thirty and get home after night has fallen.